The BEST BROKERS for Europeans in 2025 (ETFs & Stocks)

if you're investing in ETFs or individual stocks as a European choosing the right broker is essential I'm going to focus on eight brokers in today's updated comparison including some newcomers like revolute and n26 many of you asked me about after all you should not be wasting any money on unnecessary fees and your long-term Investments should not be exposed to risks you didn't sign up for more on that later just so you know where I'm coming from my wife and I have been investing to stocks in the form of passive ETFs for close to 8 years now and our portfol has grown reasonably large since then I've used countless brokerage accounts throughout this period aiming to find the best options for European investors like myself however I only stuck with a few of them in the end for different reasons which I'll talk about today we'll start by going over what I consider essential features a long-term broker needs to have before taking a closer look at the best local Brokers we have access to in Europe including some new additions I am also going to mention local options if you're based in Austria like me or in Germany that's because taxes in the these two countries are a lot more complex so picking a local broker that takes care of these for you makes a lot of sense before you get started you can find all the links to the Brokers I mentioned in today's video down below in the description which is a great way to support me if you'd like to and while you're there don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet okay here's what I consider to be five non-negotiables for a long-term broker strict regulation in a country with deep Capital markets your broker should not be landing out your stocks or ETFs without you being able to opt out as this adds a bit of counterparty risk you should be able to invest directly ly in Euros without being forced to convert to US Dollars and paying conversion fees there should be no account fees or anything similar and you should be able to transfer your shares in and out as you never want to be locked into one broker there's just one more thing I want to mention before we get to each broker no matter which one you use make sure you always place your ETF orders during regular Market hours between 9: to 17:30 Central European Time to ensure the lowest possible spreads otherwise you should be working with limit orders checking current buy and sell prices on the gex exchange can help with that okay let's begin with interactive brokers the only broker on this list that's available to users from all across the world but I'll still be focusing on us European investors in this video interactive brokers was founded in the US all the way back in 1978 and with over $16 billion in equity Capital the broker puts a strong emphasis on security it is also highly profitable with more than $3 billion in profit last year European clients are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and IB is a publicly listed company in the US which means there's even more regulatory oversight and transparency compared to most other Brokers if I had to pick a single broker to keep hundreds of thousands of euros worth of Investments on for decades interactive brokers would be my first choice which is why it is in fact my largest investment account that's also because there are no account fees and because they give you access to any exchange you can think of across the world while only charging extremely low trading fees you can always transfer your shares in or out of the broker without any fees as well so you're never locked in now let's look at the details as far as investing goes the vast majority of ETF investors should switch to the tiered price pricing plan to pay as little in fees as possible it may take up to 48 hours for this change to take effect you then only pay 0. 05% with a minimum of €125 instead of a minimum of € with fixed pricing I created a calculation sheet you can use which are link down below to compare pricing models that is as long as ETF in this example the Vanguard footy o World uses Ibis also known as cetra in Germany as its home exchange ETFs with other Home exchanges like bbme which stands for borsa Milano with the invasa FI o for example sample can come with slightly higher fees usually starting at €260 as you can see here but there's an easy way to ensure you still only pay the lowest possible fee of 0. 05% with a 1 year and 25 minimum for this as well just create a recurring investment instead where you can even buy them as soon as the next day if you want you can set it up so that it stops after a single investment I currently have a recurring 1,000 investment running for the invasa FI o ETF myself and as you can see here I never pay more than 1.

25 in fees this way in my opinion recurring Investments are the easiest way to invest here especially if you're a beginner and you want to keep things as simple as possible there is no share lending by default on interactive brokers unless you want to manually activate it yourself either using a margin account or when you hold over 100k in assets on the broker if you turn the feature on IB shares 50% of the profits from your Landing activities with you in my opinion it's not really worth it for ETFs though as you're unlikely to make more than an extra 0. 01% per year that way and you're still adding a bit of risk to your long longterm Investments now as far as downsides go interactive brokers can be a bit overwhelming for beginners because of all of its features well at least until you place your first order or set up a recurring investment to make things even easier and while interactive brokers pce interest on uninvested cash in different currencies you should be aware that your uninvested funds are only protected up to €20,000 with their Irish investor compensation scheme instead of the usual 100K bank deposit guarantee but in my opinion all of its advantages far outweigh its few cons which is why Interactive brok remains my personal number one and the most often recommended broker in Europe for good reason next up is trade Republic a broker and now also bank that's based and regulated in Germany with over 35 billion EUR in assets under management and millions of customers in 17 European countries trade Republic is one of the largest brokers in Europe those numbers are one year old by the way I've been told they've grown exponentially since then right after interactive brokers this is the broker I'm using the most due to its very low flat fee of only €1 for direct orders and its commission free saving AKA recurring Investments trade Republic only uses a single exchange to execute its orders the German L and Schwartz however it guarantees the same or even better prices compared to the reference Market Etc during its opening hours so from 9: to 17:30 Central European Time thus to ensure the tightest spreads and that you're never overpaying for shares you should only place market orders during that time or use limit orders instead the commission free saving plans which you can set up to invest weekly twice a month monthly or quarterly starting from a still as one are always executed at a time with tight spreads in the market so there you don't even have to think about it you might also be happy to hear that payment for orderflow is no more on trade Republic for any investor that's not based in Germany and for German investors it will be removed in 2026 not only that trade Republic also passes on the exact short-term ECB interest rate one to one to its customers for their deposits which at the time of this recording stands at 3. 25% per year right now you're only able to earn interest on the first €50,000 your cash itself is secured by a 100,000 bank deposit guarantee that is unless you're based in Germany where they implemented a change that is likely going to be passed on to other countries next year basically there they remov the $50,000 cap for uninvested funds you can earn interest on which means users are now earning the full ECB rate on any funds above 50k as well to ensure that the money is still fully protected even when more than €100,000 are deposited the limit of bank deposit guarantees in Europe trade Republic implemented the following changes first it ensures that it never holds more than €100,000 at one of its partner Banks moving some cash over to a second bank if necessary adding an additional 00,000 insurance for those funds and second some of the money can be allocated to a money market fund right now that's a black rock ICS Euro liquidity fund which is in the lowest possible risk category you're always able to see exactly how your money is being held in your account your money within a money market fund is completely segregated from the broker and Banks which means it's fully protected and can't be touched in case of bankruptcy just like with stocks and ETFs by implementing this change trade Republic is able to ensure that any amount you deposit to your account to earn interest on even above the default €1 100,000 bank deposit guarantee is protected another reason for this change is that they can't infinitely scale the amount their partner banks are willing to pay interest on and this is solving that problem you'll be notified once this changes life in your country and you'll have to agree to it first after which you'll get a new trade Republic ebun most likely this will happen sometime in the coming months until then this only applies to Germany for now but I still wanted to cover it as for my wife and I we've been using trade Republic to earn interest on our cash reserves for close to 2 years now which earned us an extra € 1,51 in interest so far we're not planning to change this once trade Republic rolls out this update in Austria since I see no issue with some of our money sitting in a segregated lowrisk money market fund in addition to Banks the trade Republic card the broker introduced this year has also been great since it gets us an extra 1% save back on our expenses as a family which I invest into the same F of a monthly 50000 Savings Plan running for on trade Republic the accumulating Invesco the O the fact that it comes with zero currency exchange fees passing on the Visa rates without a markup and enables us to withdraw cash from ATMs for free is another nice benefit of the card my EUR deposits and withdrawals from trade Republic are very fast as well these usually arrive within a few hours you can of course also transfer your stocks and ETF shares to another broker whenever you want for free so you're never locked in here either what is more this is also the only broker on the list where can also directly buy Bitcoin if you so wish which is then held for you by trade Republic custody game beha in Austria just be aware that you're paying a bit extra for the convenience you lose about 0.

5% when buying and 0. 5% when selling hidden in higher spreads via Bank house sh where these trades are executed as for downsides trade Republic's biggest downside is what you'll hear the most complains about the slow customer service you have to decide for yourself how important this is to you the thing is trade Republic has multiplied its users over the past few years the number you see on its website is from close to a year ago and several Times Higher now just to give you an idea so scaling this department especially across 17 European countries has been its biggest challenge by far all I can tell you from my personal experience is that my close friends and family members never needed to contact support and that I've always received a useful response when I send them a question myself but it took a while it wasn't anything urgent though in my case and I hope they've gotten faster since and while trade Republic uses a single exchange I've never once been unhappy with the price any of my ETF orders has been executed at and I've compared it a lot with other brokers in my opinion this is not a concern for anyone buying and holding ETFs long term which is why they're the broker I use the most right after interactive brokers let's get to scalable Capital next another locost broker that's based and regulated in Germany which is currently available to investors from Germany Austria Italy France Spain and the Netherlands similarly to trade Republic they also charge a very low fee of 9 cents for orders that are executed using the gex exchange and soon The eix Exchange they just launched once again these two exchanges need to at least match match prices on the largest public Exchange in Germany cetra during its opening hours you have the option to also use cetra directly if you want but then you're paying a significantly higher fee of €3. 99 plus 0.

01% of the trading amount recurring investments from as little as 1 are also free of charge making scalable another great option especially if you're investing smaller amounts on a regular basis and while they weren't passing on interest so far on uninvested funds using their free broker model the only one I want to focus on today they just announced this is changing new investors are earning the ECB rate of currently 3. 25% on the first 50,000 of uninvested funds which will be split among partner banks with 100,000 bank deposit guarantees as well as money market funds seems like they got a lot of inspiration from what trade Republic has been doing but I'm certainly not going to complain about it existing users will be moved to the new model as well in the coming weeks after agreeing to the new terms within the account but my wife and I have been using scalable capital on occasion over the past few years and I've had zero issues transferring some ETF shares from scalable to interactive brokers for free 1 and a half years ago I pretty much only have two complaints based on my experience First Cash transfers to and from scalable usually take an extra day compared to other Brokers because the bank they've been working with the butter bank is quite slow and second transaction PDFs don't appear until a few days after you executed an order in contrast to trade Republic where they appear instantly once again their custodian B bank with it slow processes was to blame for this based on their announcement this could soon be a thing of the past though which I'm very happy to see okay we're nowhere near done with European Brokers yet I just quickly have to talk about Brokers for investors from Germany as well as Austria where I'm a self and based that's because taxes in these two countries especially regarding ETFs are very complicated so picking a local broker that takes care of this for you is worth it for the convenience alone if you're based in Germany the two German Brokers trade Republic and scalable Capital which I just talked about are both excellent options ensuring you don't have to waste any time on taxes yourself both of them can also be used if you're in Austria and they will make your life a bit easier by supplying you with a yearly tax report outlining the amount you need to enter in your tax returns but this extra step will still cost you time on a yearly basis and you'll need to learn how to do it properly using Finance online as a result I generally recommend going with flatex if you're based in Austria at the moment flat tax is the only lowcost broker without account fees which takes care of any taxes for Austrian residents it's part of the profitable publicly listed company flatex deiro and has been in The Brokerage business for over 15 years recurring Investments for ETFs cost a maximum of €150 each time but some are even commission free right now including the accumulating Invesco fozi o World which we buy on a monthly basis my wife has her own monthly savings plan for the ETF running on flatex with the money being taken directly from her external bank account making this very convenient not only that some ETFs like the Invesco footsy o but also the popular Vanguard footsy oal can also currently be purchased commission free directly as long as you buy more than €1,000 of it at once using one of these six exchanges on the left I usually just pick the first one trade gate as for downsides outside of the examples I just mentioned fees are generally quite a bit higher compared to the Brokers I mentioned so far but if you're a simple Buy and Hold ETF investor like we are you'll still be paying very little while saving yourself plenty of time by not needing to deal with taxes in Austria and the fact that everything is only available in German could be a problem for some people now trade Republic seems to be very close to being able to directly take care of any taxes for ausan residents as well in fact they already founded the legally necessary subsidiary for in Vienna I have been told it should already happen in the coming months and if it does this means we'll finally have a simple less expensive local alternative to flatex which I'm very excited about until then flatex is the way to go to keep things simple in Austria okay let's get back to Brokers that are available across Europe starting with Theo the broker is supervised and regulated by regulatory agencies in Germany and the Netherlands and Theo is part of the publicly listed company flatex Ziro which I mentioned a minute ago trading fees are also competitive but not the best while they only pay a flat onee fee when buying an ETF from the core selection list which sadly doesn't include the Invesco foi old ETF we buy you pay a total of three per trade for etests that aren't part of the core selection sadly that's not all you also pay an extra €250 for each exchange you use in a given year and each exchange one of your positions is held on something that can add up quickly this basically translates to a somewhat hidden account fee as you're forced to pay yearly fees even if you're only holding shares on the broker long term generally the fees are quite a bit higher compared to trade with public scalable capital and most trades on interactive brokers where you usually only pay a total of1 125 for orders up to €2,500 using tiered pricing and none of the three Brokers I just mentioned charge you additional fees for simply holding your positions there my main problem with the Euro and why it wouldn't be my first choice for a long-term broker has nothing to do with fees though it's the fact that the zuro can lend out your shares at any time and you can't opt out of it while your Shares are only lent out against collateral of at least 104% of their value this still introduces some counterparty risk which in my opinion is not something you should need to worry about with your long-term Investments the only exception to this rule are custody accounts but sadly deiro removed this option a few years ago until the share Ling policy is removed for me deiro is one level below the Brokers I mentioned so far it's the main reason I transferred all shares I had here to interactive brokers one and a half years ago which the Ziro also charged quite a bit for instead of doing it for free I shared my experience with the transfer in a video back then which I link down below as it might useful this brings me to n26 next a well-known German Bank I've also used in the past they've only started offering Investment Services across Europe very recently and they're using an external white label Solution by a German fintech called upwest for this upwest is also the one coding the assets which means they fall under German regulation at only 90 cents per trade the fees are very competitive and the trades are executed using the trade gate exchange which has tight spreads during regular Public Market hours the deal breaker for me is the following there is currently no way to transfer shares in or out of ENT 26 which means you're locked in at the moment if you decide to use n26 for your Investments hopefully this is something that will change in the future but until then for me this is a valid reason to skip this broker I would also prefer if n26 wasn't using an external service provider like upst to provide Investments for his clients as I believe this adds unnecessary complexity meaning an extra potential point of failure compared to doing everything inh house and then there's revolute which I love using as an additional bank account however it wouldn't be where I'd be looking to invest longterm let me explain first of all since revolut's offer is still relatively new many stocks and ETFs are still missing as for the fees using the standard plan you get one free trade per month otherwise you pay a relatively High fee of 0. 25% with a minimum of 1 year per trade they are planning to add free recurring ETF buys for some ETFs according to a recent email though now let's look at the details and why I'm not that big of a fan of what they offer it seems like revolute is using the same external white label solution to offer these Investments like n26 meaning the trade are executed using the API of the German fintech upv instead of doing this in-house it's also not quite clear what exchange is used to execute your order beforehand in fact some orders can even be executed internally or over the counter without ever touching an exchange they do have a best execution policy so I'm really hoping that users don't end up paying more compared to regular public stock exchanges on average European clients then have their assets custodi by revolute Securities Europe UAB which means they fall under Lithuanian regulation this certainly wouldn't be my first choice as far as regul ation is concerned since Lithuania is such a tiny Financial Market next up we have trading 212 a broker that managed to fix some of what I criticize the most over the years 80% of its users are now able to transfer shares to other Brokers with the rest hopefully following soon this is something that wasn't possible before which I consider to be a major deal breaker and you can now fully disable share Ling in your account to minimize counterparty risk another welcome change they've also introduced interest on uninvested funds where they're paying significantly more than the risk-free ECB rate on Euro deposits right now they're paying 3.

7% on Euros per year while banks are only able to get 3. 25% of your short-term deposits this is something I found a bit unsettling from the beginning since the extra interest has to come from somewhere so let's see how this works some of the money is held at its two partner Banks JP Morgan and Barclays you should be aware that these deposits are only protected up to a total maximum of €20,000 for the investor compensation scheme in Cyprus now if you're based in the UK as much as 85,000 British pounds is protected which is a lot better but I'm going to mainly focus on you clients in this video and as you can see in this screenshot from my account when you activate interest on trading 212 some of the funds are held in Q mmfs which stands for qualified money market funds these funds are held separately from the broker and should thus be fully protected in case of bankruptcy no matter the amount if nonetheless there would be a major issue for whatever reason your entire deposit so whatever is sitting on the two bank accounts combined with the money market funds would only be covered up to a total maximum of 20,000 with the investor compensation scheme in Cyprus now I wish we could see what money market fund is being used right away but at least we do get this information afterwards in each monthly statement as you can see here in my test the money was sitting in a Black Rock IC your government liquidity fund which is in the lowest possible risk category so if this is always the case I don't see a problem with their use of money market funds however this doesn't answer the question how trading 2 and two is paying so much interest compared to other Banks and Brokers as you can see here this money market fund is currently only paying around 3% per year and its partner banks are unlikely to be paying them more than the 3. 25% they're able to get from the EC right now since trading 212 is paying its clients 3.

7% on Euros this means the broker is likely paying a pretty significant difference of 0. 5 to 0. 7% interest out of pocket as it stands of course they might simply be doing this as a marketing expense but this still feels a bit strange to me as they're clearly losing money on this part of their business they've also rolled out a card paying 0.

5% cash back after the initial promotional period ending in 2 weeks up to a maximum of € 23 per month the card worked very well in my testing so I might start using using it whenever we reach the 15 cap via the 1% save back we get from trade Republic by using their card for all of our expenses now let's finally get to how trading 2 and two stacks up as an actual broker for stocks and ETFs starting with its pros there are no order fees or any other account fees and its currency conversion fees are quite low at only 0. 15% and I wish other Brokers would offer investment pies as a feature as well as for the downsides while trading to to uses interactive brokers to execute most of the trades in the back end and to hold your shares this still adds an ex extra layer of complexity in the custody chain compared to just using interactive brokers directly also as a result of this you seem to be unable to transfer your shares to interactive brokers for example as your portfolio grows in size another thing you may not be aware of is that according to its order execution policy trading 2 and two execute some trades internally without your order ever reaching a stock exchange when that happens they're able to avoid the fees they would otherwise need to pay interactive brokers for that trade hopefully this doesn't impact the price you pay when buying stocks and ETFs but just to make sure it will Mak sense to work with limit orders and while it's great to see that the trading 212 group was profitable according to its latest audited financial statement from 2023 where it generated a net profit of £23 million we now need to answer the following question how is trading 2 and two making money after all all trades within the invest account are commission free and As We examined before they must currently be paying some of the interest they offer on uninvested funds out of pocket as it turns out the broker is currently generating a bit of revenue from the 0. 15% foreign exchange fee and its cut of the share Ling income when users have the feature activated but the vast majority of its revenue and profits are coming from a source most of you watching should avoid trading 22 cfd offering where 75% of retail investors lose money trading with leverage and using derivatives sadly this is just one click away with IND the app something I'm not too happy about unless you're a professional in the field please avoid trading cfds and stick to the invest account when using the broker there is one major reason I personally still wouldn't feel comfortable holding a larger amount on the broker EU clients and their assets are regulated by the CAC in Cyprus which let's just say is not known for its stringent regulation and since we're talking about our long-term Investments here I consider strict regulatory oversight of our assets to be essential so while I do feel the trading 22 has improved a lot and I will be using its new payment card myself on occasion I wouldn't feel comfortable holding more than €20,000 on this broker until that aspect changes it looks like they recently acquired the German buffing regulated broker FX flat so hopefully this means EU clients will be moved to a German entity in the future we'll have to wait and see meanwhile if you're based in the UK your assets are overseen by the FCA in your country in which case I think trading 2 and two could be a decent choice just keep some of its limitations in mind like not being able to transfer shares to interactive brokers and steer clear of its cfd account where you're the most likely to lose money all right guys let's finish this video with a quick recap of what I consider to be the best local brokers in Europe right now especially for long-term ETF investors like myself interactive brokers Remains the goal standard and the only one that gets five out of five stars from me due to everything that the broker offers and its long history and financial strength if I had to pick a single account to keep hundreds of thousands worth of Investments on no matter which country I was living in this would be the one trade Republic comes in second place for me with 4.

five stars due to its flat one-year trading fee commission free recurring Investments as well as the full ECB interest rate on uninvested Euros plus the 1% save back using the card scalable Capital another German broker also gets a 4.